"As soon as it falls, or as it falls, or when it scatters, isn’t the snow already melting imperceptibly and ceaselessly before our eyes? ... Is melting snow still snow? Isn't it already water?" - The Silent Transformations, François Jullien

Rarely do we direct our attention to the invisible or inaudible amidst seeing or hearing. GalleryJJ is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of recent works by Jeon Heekyoung, exploring abstract pictorial spaces and the inner world through motifs in nature. Jeon delves into the in-betweens of physical reality and absolutes, presenting unseen impressions as scenery through her unique abstract language. Richer Viridian marks her first solo exhibition since completing a one-year residency in Jeju in 2023, where she expands the theme based on a more verdant and profound nature encountered away from the city. On view are two dozen new works along with a large-scale piece measuring about four meters. Particularly, the Interminable Blue series has embarked on succeeding narratives with various subtitles since 2021, referencing the cosmos and life through pristine, untouched forests. Characterized by superimposed scenery over backgrounds, not as landscapes, and the recurring motif of dynamically ascending curves, the new paintings exhibit her organic engagement with nature and offer a broader perspective.

Jeon combines sensory experiences and painterly imaginations drawn from intangible natural phenomena such as light, wind, and climate, infusing them with elements reminiscent of valleys or waterfalls, expressed through abstract language. This creates a profoundly different dimension of captivating pictorial space that beckons us into familiar yet foreign territories. Through a range of greens and blues, uninhibited brushstrokes conveying spatiality, and the painterly depth in white margins and layers, though abstract, she implies real scenery or imaginative domains, weaving unexpected narratives. There is a unique allure akin to sansu - or shanshui, a term for traditional landscape paintings in East Asia that translates to ‘mountains and water’ - that draws us into unknown places on the picture plane. From the early Scene of Life series (2009), followed by Ideal Life (2015) and Ideal Landscape (2017), her previous works seem to capture the perplexity between the ideal and reality, or hint at utopia as a refuge. As invisible elements of nature gradually penetrate, her gestures become more liberated and expressive, evident from Study on the Shape of Wind (2021) to the Interminable Blue series, where narratives exploring her inner self and venturing into uncharted nature are prominent.

If we were to designate her abstract canvas as a type of landscape, it is best described as scenery of the mind. It signifies the visible expression of the interstices between reality and ideals she inhabits, where desires roam and indefinable, ever-changing manifestations occur. From this perspective, the artist holds a certain orientation towards a specific space or a sense of placeness intended to evoke nuances of nature. Given that her scenery is far from mere celebrations or leisurely views, they lead us sensorially to the world beyond, aiming to reach a place mediated through nature, inherent within the human subconscious. She directly faces the wilderness to experience and assimilate nature - trees, moss, rocks, light, and wind - thereby expanding her speculation on the origin of fluctuating force, and their connection to human existence, visually embodying such narratives. Jeon describes the scenery she sees as both nature and culture reflected in the surroundings, everything that society has projected.

The titles ‘Sceneries Fluttering in the Wind’, ‘Deeper, Lusher, Boundless, and Dazzling’, or ‘Emerald Puddle’ are as poetic as the paintings themselves and evoke sentiments familiar to anyone, encapsulating personal imagery akin to diary entries. Jeon often selects titles from personal writings, aiming to expand the narrative structure beyond the canvas frame, creating connections between each painting. Narrative is acquired in between the structure of a series of paintings, their installations experienced in a physical space, where each painting is a complete work yet contributes to a larger narrative. Even if painting becomes abstract and eschews literary elements, viewers still seek content, and the artist subtly embeds her own stories within the work. She has long explored ways to convey narratives without relying on concrete forms, seeking structures that allow stories to emerge organically from the canvas. The white margins, built upon base layers of the background, are not mere voids; rather, they hold additional narratives, serving as fertile ground for textual exploration. By selectively erasing colors with brushes, squeegees, or sponges, and leaving blank spaces, she navigates between the visible and invisible realms. As these blank and filled spaces intersect, they construct a structure that invites viewers to leisurely stroll through the depicted scenes, reminiscent of the creation and extinction of life in sansu, where rhetorical spacetime overlaps. The observer and the observed are not distinct here. Jeon describes herself as an explorer deeply savoring and traversing the places in scenery, likening her painting process to sightseeing in Mount Kumgang.

The new Interminable Blue series features background spaces accompanied by views from above, similar to the Three Distances (San-e-ho) employed in East Asian shanshui, known as deep distance (simwon) or bird’s eye view. However, this does not imply that Jeon employs such methods in her work.

"I want to move the scenery floating in my mind directly into the cosmos, the infinite space in me, like the old method of creating a pristine forest in one's backyard. Having spent a brief time in Jeju, it seems that its shape, floating in a boundless ocean, appears in my inner world like a transposed scenery." - Artist’s note

In her composition, Jeon refers to still-life where scenery overlays the background as a single image. It is not about natural scenery or landscape as a subject but rather a scene of the cosmos, inclusive of oneself. Upon immersing in vast nature, bodily movements and breaths seamlessly meld with it, integrating individuals into the larger whole rather than separate entities. This experience is depicted as abstract scenery where everything is interconnected, leading one to forests or verdant landscapes viewed from the weightlessness of space. The canvas transcends being a mere snippet of landscape; it embodies the boundless nature, the universe in her inscape, where Jeon turns the work of Mother Nature into her own intimate forest, candidly unfolding it on the canvas. It could be that the previously floating world of imagination has now gained substance and manifested itself. Wonlim denotes a form of garden culture where untouched forests are preserved as an integral part of the landscape, embodying the heterotopic placeness of literati. Initially coined to describe the landscaping of dwellings during the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties, the term is rooted in the Chinese word Yuanlin, indicating ‘a place for leisure and relaxation.’ It encapsulates scholars’ ideas, depicting a space deeply interwoven with emotions, where nature finds solace and envelops us. This perception, akin to the picturesque movement that prevailed in late 18th-century England, reflects urban bourgeois longing for enchanting distant realms. As a city dweller, she envisions and pursues the world intertwined with such natural sanctuaries, which is not only applicable to the artist alone. The archetypal place or the Arcadian realm, the utopia as a healing place, or even Abgrund in human subconscious are open to nature and remain ambiguous. From the outset, her paintings, imbued with personal stories traverse beyond the boundaries of reality and unreality in the natural world, through anxiety and turmoil to desires and landscapes of the mind.

“This isn't fog. I'm definitely in the clouds now. The clouds must have descended near the ground for a moment." - Artist note

Nature, or jayeon, means ‘the way things are’, and Jeon describes it as ‘the inscape of all things passing like flowing water.’ The expressive strokes in the work emerge from the interplay of intention and chance, revealing a recurring motif of curves rising in succession. Calm yet robust, the myriad curves seamlessly translate and depict her ongoing journey and inevitable transformation. From water and puddles to clouds and mist, moss and trees, and the deepening hues of sky and foliage, everything appears interconnected like a panoramic vista, all enveloped in eternal recurrence. As philosopher François Jullien posits, where the bath of light ends and its retraction begins, everything undergoes uninterrupted changes, even if not perceived, thereby rendering life in a silent transformation. The colors and brushstrokes within her work unveil new rhythms and possibilities, shaping an interconnected cycle where each serve as both cause and effect. This endless repetition offers a moment for contemplation and inquiry into the essence of artistic experience, as well as into nature and life itself. While nature may offer refuge from the human world, the destination attained through natural scenery often returns to the same point of departure as all creations are part of continuous and cyclical nature.

Jeon’s ‘scenery of the mind’ diverges from Western landscapes, rooted in visual phenomena, and East Asian sansu, which allude to natural scenery to compose visual poetry. Her work visualizes the invisibles, from the tangible experience of nature's presence to sensory ones involving touch and scent, as if feeling and hearing the wind, mist, and the azure sky. Like all art, it has the power to poetically engage the viewers, embedded within it an instinctive recognition of the primal beauty and richness of the world that cannot be replaced by artifact. Navigating the realms between landscape and sansu, real and unreal, phenomenon and sensation, her work occupies a place somewhere amidst the past and present, and gains importance in the art scene now. What becomes evident is her pursuit in this ambiguous realm - a world she seeks, a place allowing poetic dwelling, a flexible spirit transcending both openness and closure, adapting to internal and external changes. Encountering such a place in the exhibition - a place we all carry in subconscious – provides a familiar, comforting, nostalgic realm reminiscent of a star-strewn sky, though ethereal and non-existent, which might suffice.

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Text | Juyeon Kang, GalleryJJ Director

Translation | Brett Lee